“She’s safe now. It’s now, and she’s safe. She’s in Talamh again. Sedric and Nan have her.”
Exhausted, Breen let her head fall back, let it all drain. She dropped down into the chair again, with the globe in her lap, the dog at her feet. And slept.
Keegan found her there an hour before dawn. Bollocks gave a couple of taps of his skinny tail, then went back to sleep.
“And why would she sleep in a chair when there’s a perfectly good bed in the next room?”
Baffled by her, annoyed with her for no reason he cared to name, he rubbed at the stiffness in his neck.
He should wake her, send her to her own bed. If she wanted to take out the dog or go for one of her walks, he’d have someone go with her.
Or he could just carry her into his bed, take the chair for himself, as he didn’t expect sleep to come to him for a while yet.
In any case, he wanted a drink and time to sit, just sit and think.
He started to lift her up, and the moment he touched her, she shot awake.
“Keegan.” She laid a hand on his chest. “You’re back. What time is it? Did you find her?”
He straightened, decided on whiskey. “Plain to see I’m back,” he said as he poured three fingers into a cup. “What difference is the time? And we didn’t find her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No more than I. I never thought her clever enough to hide more than a few hours at best. Not in the dark and the cold when she’s used to soft beds and warm fires.”
Because it grated, he sat with his whiskey and said what had circled in his mind throughout the search. “It’s a lowering thing to understand I never knew her, not as I thought. I knew the flaws and faults, but they seemed shallow things and nothing I couldn’t overlook for my own pleasures.”
“Stop. She doesn’t deserve to have you blaming yourself.”
He shrugged at that, drank. “I see the shallow things she had no qualms in letting me, or anyone, see hid deeper flaws. Darker ones. And for all her love of soft beds and good wine and shiny things, she’s evaded more than two dozen who search for her through the night.”
“She’s desperate, and desperation gives her an edge.”
“When the light comes, the word will go out, and more will search. Who might she hurt in her desperation before we find her? And when we do, the law allows only one end.”
He turned the cup in his hands, stared into the whiskey. “She’ll never know a soft bed again. You’ll have to speak at the Judgment, and I’m sorry for that. And so will Kiara, and I’m sorrier yet for that.”
It tore at him, she thought. All of it tore at him.
“She never understood you, or that the power you have carries such weight. Shiny things like these gorgeous rooms don’t balance that scale.”
He sat back, watching her as he drank. “Are they gorgeous then?” He glanced around. “I’d rather be home, in the valley. In the quiet.”
“So would I.”
He looked back at her, smiled. “Would you now?”
“The Capital’s beautiful and exciting, the views are stunning. The people are lovely. But there are so many of them.”
“Aye, by the gods.” He closed his eyes, just for a moment, then half toasted her with his whiskey. “Well then, you could’ve kept your mouth shut all those years ago, and not floated around in the lake with your hair all swirling like fire in the water, and telling me the sword was meant for me.”
“You’d have taken it anyway. It’s who you are. Wait. What did I look like, when you saw me on the day you became taoiseach?”
“As you do.”
“No, I mean, as I am—not a kid? You were, what, like fourteen, so I’d have been around twelve. Did I look twelve?”
“You weren’t a child. I saw a woman.”
“Right. Right.” She rose to pace, running the globe through her hands. “So I was closer to now than then. I might not have done it yet.”
“If you hadn’t done it, I wouldn’t have seen you, so you’re babbling.”
“I’m not. Whether it’s lucid dreams or time travel or astral projection, I was years older than I would’ve been. So I went back—one way or the other. Maybe this.”
She held up the globe. “Or it’s a tool, a vehicle, a boost. How the hell do I know? But I did it again last night.”
“You went back to the day at the lake?”
“No.” She sat again, leaned toward him. “Not there, not then. God, I’d give a year of my life for a Coke. No, I tried to see in the fire, to see if I could help find Shana, but I haven’t mastered that yet. I get close, but not quite. And I remembered the globe, and how you’d shown me—well, not shown, but challenged me—to get a glass of water from the kitchen while I was still in my bedroom.”